Foreign bodies impacted in the oral cavity are rarely documented with a majority report occurring in children in the literature probably because most of the cases are usually asymptomatic and are easily removed by the patients themselves particularly in the adult patient group. Foreign body Impactions are more common in children because of their frequent habits of placing foreign objects in the oral cavity which when stuck are not reported to their parents because of fear of been reprimanded. Following road traffic crashes some of the foreign bodies may be impacted into the soft tissues of the oral cavity.
These foreign bodies include food and non-food objects ( dental materials including overhanging dental restorations, broken dental instruments, impression materials, and needles; pins, tooth picks, wooden materials, pencil and biro tips, straws, plastics, glass, arrows and other metals, etc). These objects may be impregnated in the cavities of the broken or fractured teeth and the root canals of the teeth with open pulp chambers, gums, tongue, floor of the mouth, tonsillar fossa and crypts, and the jaw bones1,2,3.
The sudden disappearance of a tooth during extraction should be a source of concern to the operator as it might have been pushed into the soft tissues, the maxillary antrum or any of the facial spaces in the head and neck region.
Occasionally these objects may be symptomless and may be an incidental finding. Clinical presentation may be in the form of a simple abscess or occasionally mimicking other pathologies such as granulomas, tumours2,4 and anthroliths. Diagnosis of these should be based on good clinical history and examination with imaging of the suspected areas.
Removal of foreign bodies is usually a challenge. Retrieval of the impacted objects depends on the size, site of the objects which may be achieved by simply picking, endoscopy and open surgical procedures. However, each of these procedures has potential complications.
References
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